Moving On (3/6)
AN: I am SO terribly sorry for letting this story sit for so long! My House-writing, Wilson-hurting muse ran away and far but she happily returned after I watched “Transplant” last night. So here is the next chapter - finally! I appreciate your patience, all of you.
I realize this is short but I thought it a good place to end the chapter.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Chapter 2
Wilson released a sigh of relief as he settled against the headboard of their bed. The trip home hadn’t been exactly pain free for either of them and while the extreme discomfort was still there, he felt better just for being home. The throbbing in his body made him question the wisdom of refusing the offered wheelchair to get inside the loft but one look at how badly House was hurting dismissed the doubt with the effort of using a bat to kill a spider. He watched with dismay as his friend heavily limped into their bedroom, barely putting weight on his right leg as he went. This wasn’t the way things were supposed to have gone tonight - House’s leg had been feeling better and now they were right back where they started.
With a heavy sigh full of annoyance and anger, Wilson leaned his head against the headboard behind him with a hard thunk. The soft mattress beneath him was almost enough to lull him into a restless doze but the bed dipping to his right made him want to stay awake. He wished there was something he could do to help House but he didn’t have neither the strength in his hands nor the ability to move without pain to do so, so he remained on his half of the bed, watching his friend and lover intensely until the older man was lying flat on the bed with relaxation slowly smoothing out the lines of pain on his face.
Wilson’s own eyelids began drooping when they saw House’s close. He’d done a fair amount of sleeping while in the ER but his body still demanded more. Deciding it was best to give in rather than fight it, the oncologist allowed his body to relax as much as it could and began to lightly doze. A soft hand on his right arm drew his eyes open, the gentle brown irises slowly gliding across the bed until they landed on House’s sideways form.
“Lay down,” the diagnostician commanded gently but evenly. He knew that Wilson was exhausted but he also knew his friend’s back wouldn’t forgive either of them if he was allowed to sleep upright all night, and probably morning, long. When Wilson merely blinked dazedly at him he gave his friend’s arm a gentle tug, making sure to keep any emotion from his eyes when the injured man winced. He watched stoically on the sidelines as Wilson shimmied down the bed, little gasps escaping when he put too much weight on an injury. His body wanted nothing more than to help ease his lover down thereby lessening the pain but his thigh demanded that he remain where he was and leave it be.
Once Wilson was lying flat on the bed, House ran a practiced eye over the long and lean form of his lover wishing they both were up to more than just laying there. His eyes stopped on every injury, seen or unseen, trying to determine if they were indeed minor or if there was more to them. The ankle of course wasn’t minor but it wasn’t life threatening either. Sure he’d be in pain for a week until they could get the limb inside a protective cast then for another few days after that until the swelling around the ankle had gone down enough for the fiberglass to be comforting rather than suffocating but pain was nothing - even if it was Wilson who was experiencing it.
Wilson let out a small breath of relief and House nodded his approval at his friend’s condition. He settled down on the bed, waiting until he heard the deep, even breathing from next to him before he allowed his body to completely relax and fell asleep.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The comfortable silence of sleep was broken by a cry of panic and fear that echoed through the loft that both men thought more of as an apartment. The mattress jerked as one of its occupants began to thrash and fidget, fighting an attacker only he could see. House woke with the cry, instantly alert to anything wrong concerning Wilson. He turned on his side with a groan of his own and wrapped a long arm around Wilson’s torso, pulling the younger man towards him heedless of the pain it might cause.
“Wilson,” House called gruffly, his voice rough with the disuse of sleep. Wilson continued to thrash within his hold coming dangerously close of causing them both a great deal of pain as his left leg came up to kick, barely missing House’s thigh. “Wilson!” House tried again, putting more volume and urgency into his voice in the hopes of getting through to the frightened man.
With a final cry Wilson woke from his nightmare world, the one he’s come to cherish slowly swimming into view. In response to his panic, his body immediately bolted upright barely noticing the pain the wrenched through his shoulder when a familiar arm was torn off him. His breaths were ragged as his lungs shakily drew in the air and his heart pounded far too quickly. Frightened brown eyes looked about the room, searching for a foe that had never been there. The feeling of water dripping onto his shirt told him he was crying but he couldn’t feel the tears as they ran down his cheeks. The only thing his mind could focus on was being safe.
He carefully laid back down, curling so closely into House’s waiting arms that one could think they were joined by more than their love but he didn’t care. He needed to be safe and to him, House was as safe as he could get. The same arm from before wrapped around him, this time careful of where it was placed, and held onto him tightly as he simply shook and cried from fear.
House remained silent as his lover expelled his anxiety and panic. He wanted ever so dearly to soothe Wilson’s worries but he had never truly been good at comforting someone in pain (thus why he never tried) and knew that anything he said in an attempt to try would be taken the wrong way so he stayed quiet, allowing his loving embrace say everything that he couldn’t. Ever so slowly he felt Wilson’s shaking begin to cease until only the remaining vibrations in his hands were left.
“Care to tell me what happened?” he asked. His tone was gentle though his words were accusing and he ran his left hand idly up and down the small portion of Wilson’s back he could reach, hoping to show that he wasn’t angry and genuinely wanted to know.
“I, y-yes but,” was all the reply that House received even still he understood. Wilson wanted to tell him but things were still too fresh for his friend to do it comfortably. He gave a nod that he knew the oncologist had felt through his thick brown locks and simply gave a cautious squeeze.
“Okay,” he answered softly, leaning his chin on the top of Wilson’s head. Suffocating silence settled over the room, blanketing them with feelings so heavy they could barely breathe. Normally silence didn’t bother House but he knew that, left to his own devices, Wilson could work himself up into a full blown panic attack so he decided to bring some focus to both of their frantic minds. “Did you hurt anything with your epileptic seizure impression?”
“I don’t know,” Wilson mumbled into his shirt making no effort to move. There was a pause as he inhaled deeply then released the breath with shudders ransacking it. “Everything hurts.”
House’s breath hitched at those words. If Wilson had inquired at the action, the diagnostician would have simply brushed it of as pain radiating from his burning thigh but though the damaged muscle throbbed agonizingly it paled in comparison to the pain that stabbed through his heart. Taking a deep breath to recover his normal self, House carefully disentangled himself from Wilson. “Well let’s get us some pain meds then I can check you out just in case.”
He grabbed their individual doses and prescriptions of pain meds then swallowed his dry before handing Wilson’s to him with a cup of water that had been on the bedside table since God only knows when. Wilson gave him a raised eyebrow at the drink, silently indicating that he knew it had sat there for awhile but also asking if it was safe to drink before he popped the medication into his mouth and took a long swallow.
“Great! Now that we’re all drugged up, it’s touchy feely time!” House pounced on Wilson drawing a tired sigh from the other man but carefully held his own weight just above the hurting body, using his legs to support him while he ran his hands over every injury, beginning with the shoulder and working his way down. He wondered who was controlling him as he ended each exam with feather light kisses. Getting to Wilson’s legs wasn’t a problem given all he had to do was turn around but though he was a doctor, it was difficult to examine someone when they were upside down - even if it was only in your perspective. Still, he managed it quite easily and even continued his apologetic kisses, giving one to the agitated knee he’d just finished annoying. Wilson’s ankle was in its protective splint so he didn’t see the need to remove it for the examination. Although the splint had done a fine enough job of keeping the broken bones in place when Wilson had thrashed and kicked, he wouldn’t be a very good doctor if he simply allowed that to be good enough. He carefully ran his hand over where the break had been feeling for further displacement and quickly withdrew when he felt none.
“Satisfied?” Wilson asked tiredly, his body lax from exhaustion and pain relief. He raised his head to look at House then lowered it again with a sigh.
“Nope,” House answered sounding as cheery as he could. He turned around so that his body was facing Wilson’s torso and leaned down, hovering just enough above him so that their noses touched. “I still have areas I need to examine; those were just he one requiring immediate attention.”
Slowly, he lowered his arms and placed a long, gentle kiss on Wilson’s lips before the man had time to respond or deny him the satisfaction of touching him. He withdrew when his lungs demanded air but continued to allow his mouth to perform the “examination” starting with Wilson’s face and closed eyelids. The younger man’s breath hitched at the teasing kisses and his breath started coming out in quicker successions. When House moved to his neck, giving the tender skin there little love nips, Wilson groaned deep in his chest making House still immediately.
“You okay?” he asked while raising himself up to look over the prone form of his lover. An almost goofy smile appeared on Wilson’s face in response but it was the melted chocolate in his eyes that made him continue. Since the oncologist was actually dressed, there weren’t many places that House could “examine” without looking a fool so he stopped soon after he started, gently lowering himself back onto the mattress with a heavy sigh. He so dearly wanted to do more, including getting Wilson naked, but right now wasn’t the time for it. They were both exhausted, hurting and just in need of some comfort. He wrapped himself around Wilson, careful of hurting either one of them, and simply held on with all his might.
His mind ran through all the ways things could have been so much worse, beginning with the little things like there could have been more than one guy and ending with Wilson lying in the parking lot, dead from blood loss or some other trifling thing. Somewhere in there was the possibility that the attacker could have done so much more than beat his friend and he instinctively curled tighter around the man. Protection and possession swirled through him at the thought of anyone other than him laying a “loving” hand on Wilson. Shivers ran through his spine as images of some faceless man assaulting his friend and he could only hope that nothing like that had happened. Wilson didn’t seem to be traumatized that badly but with the man who was almost as good as compartmentalizing as he was, you could never be too sure.
Whether his own shivers transferred from him to the man he was holding or it was from persistent, tormenting dreams, House didn’t know but not five minutes after he started, Wilson began to shake. Drawing the blankets up around them, House snuggled closer to Wilson, thankful that the man himself wasn’t awake to tease him about it later. His hands ran over Wilson’s left side, carefully but soothingly while he hummed an old blues tune into the man’s ear. Almost as quickly as they began, the shakes stopped and Wilson’s breathing became smooth once again.
All through the night House never released his friend, scared of what might happen to him if he did. He took the safety and comfort of his friends and family very seriously and when the two were denied, he reacted with a vicious tongue towards all until the guilty party could be found and dealt with accordingly. He would never take his anger - which was aimed a great deal towards himself - out on Wilson but everyone else would not be so lucky when he returned to work.
Gentle rays of morning sunlight shone through the window in the bedroom, slowly coaxing him into the familiarity of safety and convincing him it was okay to turn his protective watch over to the promising sun and new day that was beginning to dawn. His eyelids began to droop of their own accord and soon he was asleep, trusting the daylight to bring comfort to Wilson when he woke.
Chapter 4
I realize this is short but I thought it a good place to end the chapter.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Chapter 2
Wilson released a sigh of relief as he settled against the headboard of their bed. The trip home hadn’t been exactly pain free for either of them and while the extreme discomfort was still there, he felt better just for being home. The throbbing in his body made him question the wisdom of refusing the offered wheelchair to get inside the loft but one look at how badly House was hurting dismissed the doubt with the effort of using a bat to kill a spider. He watched with dismay as his friend heavily limped into their bedroom, barely putting weight on his right leg as he went. This wasn’t the way things were supposed to have gone tonight - House’s leg had been feeling better and now they were right back where they started.
With a heavy sigh full of annoyance and anger, Wilson leaned his head against the headboard behind him with a hard thunk. The soft mattress beneath him was almost enough to lull him into a restless doze but the bed dipping to his right made him want to stay awake. He wished there was something he could do to help House but he didn’t have neither the strength in his hands nor the ability to move without pain to do so, so he remained on his half of the bed, watching his friend and lover intensely until the older man was lying flat on the bed with relaxation slowly smoothing out the lines of pain on his face.
Wilson’s own eyelids began drooping when they saw House’s close. He’d done a fair amount of sleeping while in the ER but his body still demanded more. Deciding it was best to give in rather than fight it, the oncologist allowed his body to relax as much as it could and began to lightly doze. A soft hand on his right arm drew his eyes open, the gentle brown irises slowly gliding across the bed until they landed on House’s sideways form.
“Lay down,” the diagnostician commanded gently but evenly. He knew that Wilson was exhausted but he also knew his friend’s back wouldn’t forgive either of them if he was allowed to sleep upright all night, and probably morning, long. When Wilson merely blinked dazedly at him he gave his friend’s arm a gentle tug, making sure to keep any emotion from his eyes when the injured man winced. He watched stoically on the sidelines as Wilson shimmied down the bed, little gasps escaping when he put too much weight on an injury. His body wanted nothing more than to help ease his lover down thereby lessening the pain but his thigh demanded that he remain where he was and leave it be.
Once Wilson was lying flat on the bed, House ran a practiced eye over the long and lean form of his lover wishing they both were up to more than just laying there. His eyes stopped on every injury, seen or unseen, trying to determine if they were indeed minor or if there was more to them. The ankle of course wasn’t minor but it wasn’t life threatening either. Sure he’d be in pain for a week until they could get the limb inside a protective cast then for another few days after that until the swelling around the ankle had gone down enough for the fiberglass to be comforting rather than suffocating but pain was nothing - even if it was Wilson who was experiencing it.
Wilson let out a small breath of relief and House nodded his approval at his friend’s condition. He settled down on the bed, waiting until he heard the deep, even breathing from next to him before he allowed his body to completely relax and fell asleep.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The comfortable silence of sleep was broken by a cry of panic and fear that echoed through the loft that both men thought more of as an apartment. The mattress jerked as one of its occupants began to thrash and fidget, fighting an attacker only he could see. House woke with the cry, instantly alert to anything wrong concerning Wilson. He turned on his side with a groan of his own and wrapped a long arm around Wilson’s torso, pulling the younger man towards him heedless of the pain it might cause.
“Wilson,” House called gruffly, his voice rough with the disuse of sleep. Wilson continued to thrash within his hold coming dangerously close of causing them both a great deal of pain as his left leg came up to kick, barely missing House’s thigh. “Wilson!” House tried again, putting more volume and urgency into his voice in the hopes of getting through to the frightened man.
With a final cry Wilson woke from his nightmare world, the one he’s come to cherish slowly swimming into view. In response to his panic, his body immediately bolted upright barely noticing the pain the wrenched through his shoulder when a familiar arm was torn off him. His breaths were ragged as his lungs shakily drew in the air and his heart pounded far too quickly. Frightened brown eyes looked about the room, searching for a foe that had never been there. The feeling of water dripping onto his shirt told him he was crying but he couldn’t feel the tears as they ran down his cheeks. The only thing his mind could focus on was being safe.
He carefully laid back down, curling so closely into House’s waiting arms that one could think they were joined by more than their love but he didn’t care. He needed to be safe and to him, House was as safe as he could get. The same arm from before wrapped around him, this time careful of where it was placed, and held onto him tightly as he simply shook and cried from fear.
House remained silent as his lover expelled his anxiety and panic. He wanted ever so dearly to soothe Wilson’s worries but he had never truly been good at comforting someone in pain (thus why he never tried) and knew that anything he said in an attempt to try would be taken the wrong way so he stayed quiet, allowing his loving embrace say everything that he couldn’t. Ever so slowly he felt Wilson’s shaking begin to cease until only the remaining vibrations in his hands were left.
“Care to tell me what happened?” he asked. His tone was gentle though his words were accusing and he ran his left hand idly up and down the small portion of Wilson’s back he could reach, hoping to show that he wasn’t angry and genuinely wanted to know.
“I, y-yes but,” was all the reply that House received even still he understood. Wilson wanted to tell him but things were still too fresh for his friend to do it comfortably. He gave a nod that he knew the oncologist had felt through his thick brown locks and simply gave a cautious squeeze.
“Okay,” he answered softly, leaning his chin on the top of Wilson’s head. Suffocating silence settled over the room, blanketing them with feelings so heavy they could barely breathe. Normally silence didn’t bother House but he knew that, left to his own devices, Wilson could work himself up into a full blown panic attack so he decided to bring some focus to both of their frantic minds. “Did you hurt anything with your epileptic seizure impression?”
“I don’t know,” Wilson mumbled into his shirt making no effort to move. There was a pause as he inhaled deeply then released the breath with shudders ransacking it. “Everything hurts.”
House’s breath hitched at those words. If Wilson had inquired at the action, the diagnostician would have simply brushed it of as pain radiating from his burning thigh but though the damaged muscle throbbed agonizingly it paled in comparison to the pain that stabbed through his heart. Taking a deep breath to recover his normal self, House carefully disentangled himself from Wilson. “Well let’s get us some pain meds then I can check you out just in case.”
He grabbed their individual doses and prescriptions of pain meds then swallowed his dry before handing Wilson’s to him with a cup of water that had been on the bedside table since God only knows when. Wilson gave him a raised eyebrow at the drink, silently indicating that he knew it had sat there for awhile but also asking if it was safe to drink before he popped the medication into his mouth and took a long swallow.
“Great! Now that we’re all drugged up, it’s touchy feely time!” House pounced on Wilson drawing a tired sigh from the other man but carefully held his own weight just above the hurting body, using his legs to support him while he ran his hands over every injury, beginning with the shoulder and working his way down. He wondered who was controlling him as he ended each exam with feather light kisses. Getting to Wilson’s legs wasn’t a problem given all he had to do was turn around but though he was a doctor, it was difficult to examine someone when they were upside down - even if it was only in your perspective. Still, he managed it quite easily and even continued his apologetic kisses, giving one to the agitated knee he’d just finished annoying. Wilson’s ankle was in its protective splint so he didn’t see the need to remove it for the examination. Although the splint had done a fine enough job of keeping the broken bones in place when Wilson had thrashed and kicked, he wouldn’t be a very good doctor if he simply allowed that to be good enough. He carefully ran his hand over where the break had been feeling for further displacement and quickly withdrew when he felt none.
“Satisfied?” Wilson asked tiredly, his body lax from exhaustion and pain relief. He raised his head to look at House then lowered it again with a sigh.
“Nope,” House answered sounding as cheery as he could. He turned around so that his body was facing Wilson’s torso and leaned down, hovering just enough above him so that their noses touched. “I still have areas I need to examine; those were just he one requiring immediate attention.”
Slowly, he lowered his arms and placed a long, gentle kiss on Wilson’s lips before the man had time to respond or deny him the satisfaction of touching him. He withdrew when his lungs demanded air but continued to allow his mouth to perform the “examination” starting with Wilson’s face and closed eyelids. The younger man’s breath hitched at the teasing kisses and his breath started coming out in quicker successions. When House moved to his neck, giving the tender skin there little love nips, Wilson groaned deep in his chest making House still immediately.
“You okay?” he asked while raising himself up to look over the prone form of his lover. An almost goofy smile appeared on Wilson’s face in response but it was the melted chocolate in his eyes that made him continue. Since the oncologist was actually dressed, there weren’t many places that House could “examine” without looking a fool so he stopped soon after he started, gently lowering himself back onto the mattress with a heavy sigh. He so dearly wanted to do more, including getting Wilson naked, but right now wasn’t the time for it. They were both exhausted, hurting and just in need of some comfort. He wrapped himself around Wilson, careful of hurting either one of them, and simply held on with all his might.
His mind ran through all the ways things could have been so much worse, beginning with the little things like there could have been more than one guy and ending with Wilson lying in the parking lot, dead from blood loss or some other trifling thing. Somewhere in there was the possibility that the attacker could have done so much more than beat his friend and he instinctively curled tighter around the man. Protection and possession swirled through him at the thought of anyone other than him laying a “loving” hand on Wilson. Shivers ran through his spine as images of some faceless man assaulting his friend and he could only hope that nothing like that had happened. Wilson didn’t seem to be traumatized that badly but with the man who was almost as good as compartmentalizing as he was, you could never be too sure.
Whether his own shivers transferred from him to the man he was holding or it was from persistent, tormenting dreams, House didn’t know but not five minutes after he started, Wilson began to shake. Drawing the blankets up around them, House snuggled closer to Wilson, thankful that the man himself wasn’t awake to tease him about it later. His hands ran over Wilson’s left side, carefully but soothingly while he hummed an old blues tune into the man’s ear. Almost as quickly as they began, the shakes stopped and Wilson’s breathing became smooth once again.
All through the night House never released his friend, scared of what might happen to him if he did. He took the safety and comfort of his friends and family very seriously and when the two were denied, he reacted with a vicious tongue towards all until the guilty party could be found and dealt with accordingly. He would never take his anger - which was aimed a great deal towards himself - out on Wilson but everyone else would not be so lucky when he returned to work.
Gentle rays of morning sunlight shone through the window in the bedroom, slowly coaxing him into the familiarity of safety and convincing him it was okay to turn his protective watch over to the promising sun and new day that was beginning to dawn. His eyelids began to droop of their own accord and soon he was asleep, trusting the daylight to bring comfort to Wilson when he woke.
Chapter 4